Orthodox Church were in a way powerless to regulate their relations
with Orthodoxy as a whole. They had been unable to secure the support
and assistance of any Russian bishops. They were turned down in an
appeal to the Bulgarian Church and they obtained no response from the
Patriarch of Constantinople.
Impressed by the sense of urgency and the justice of their cause,
the leaders of the movement held a synod in Kiev on October 11, 1921
and proceeded to elect as bishops Father Vasyl Lypkivsky and Father
Nestor Sharayevsky. Then, as they had no bishops available for their
consecration, the members of the Sobor laid their hands upon them and
consecrated them bishops without the participation of any bishops
save relics of the saints preserved in Kiev. Lypkivsky was then made
Metropolitan of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church and he and his
associate soon consecrated some 27 other bishops.
Yet the uncanonical nature of this original action drove a wedge
between the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church and the other Orthodox
Churches and made certain that it would not later attract any validly
consecrated bishops who would regularize the succession. On the other
hand, other reforms, as the introduction of Ukrainian into the services
in place of the old Church Slavonic, enabled the Russian opponents to
classify it with the various movements as the Living Church which the
Bolsheviks had fostered in their endeavor to disintegrate the Russian
Church from within.
Still later, when the Orthodox in the succession states began
to organize and came under the influence of the Patriarch of
Constantinople, whose position had grown less critical with the
strengthening of the new Turkey, it was too late for him to extend aid
to the Ukrainian Orthodox as he did to those living under Polish rule
by the recognition of a Polish Autocephalous Church in 1924. Thus the
Ukrainian Orthodox were left almost completely isolated to face alone
the atheistic Communist and imperialistic Russian Orthodox pressure.
Metropolitan Lypkivsky showed himself a very competent leader. The
number of parishes under his control multiplied rapidly and by 1927
the Church had nearly 3,000 parishes and some 10,600 priests. It was
no small achievement to establish and develop this under the harsh
conditions of Soviet reality and for several years during the height
of the movement of Ukrainization, the Church flourished and bade fair
to restore the traditions of the old Ukrainian Orthodox Church and
there were high hopes that sooner or later it would be able to heal the
defects in the original consecration.
This was not to be, for after the death of the Patriarch Tikhon the
power in the Russian Church passed into the hands of the Metropolitan
Sergy who showed himself willing to effect such a compromise with
Stalin and Communism as might be necessary. His offer was, to a certain
degree, accepted and the Soviet regime, without changing its policy
of persecuting all religious activity, began to throw a few crumbs
of favor to the Russian Orthodox Patriarchate in Moscow. Slowly but
surely, the various Russian divisions, like the Living Church, slipped
back into the general organization, and the Soviets soon grasped
the possibilities of using Sergy and the Russian organization as a
political weapon in their struggle for world domination.
Even before the ending of Ukrainization, the Communists began to
put obstacles in the way of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church. The
Metropolitan was refused permission to visit the various parishes under
his control and to publish journals and other material for his flock.
This was followed by more active measures. Metropolitan Lypkivsky was
arrested and imprisoned. So were all of the other bishops and by 1930
there was not a single one of the bishops still in Ukraine who was not
in prison or dead. The church was broken up and all of its activities
stopped, but the spirit that had animated it continued to lie hidden.
When the Germans and the Soviets occupied Poland in 1939, a new
possibility was sensed. The so-called Polish Autocephalous Church
was composed overwhelmingly of Ukrainians and Byelorussians, with but a few
anti-Communist Russians. Even before 1939, some of these Ukrainian
clergy and laity had begun to take steps for the Ukrainianizing of the
Church, even though they had been forced to introduce Polish into the
services. When the storm broke, Russians like Bishop Sava made their
way abroad and joined the Russians in exile. Bishop Oleksy (Hromadsky)
in Kremyanets and Bishop Polykarp (Sikorsky) in Lutsk were forced to
recognize the Moscow organization, which was coming into favor with
Stalin because of its increasing subservience to the Soviet regime.
On the other hand, Metropolitan Dionysy, who had been in that part of
Ukraine that was included in the Polish Government General, now threw
off any attempt at concealment and revived the Ukrainian Autocephalous
Church, which this time was provided with canonical orders in all
grades. He consecrated two new Ukrainian bishops, Ilarion (O. Ohienko)
for Kholm and Podlyasie and Palady (Vedybida-Rudemko) for Krakow and
Lemkivshchyna.
This marked a new period and when the Germans attacked the USSR in
1941 and occupied it, Polykarp joined them, while Oleksy set up still
another group, the Ukrainian Autonomous Church, for he refused to break
his connections with Moscow.
The German permission for the formation in 1942 of a central
organization was frankly ambiguous. On the one hand, they were glad
of any movement that would rouse the people against Moscow. On the
other, in religion as in politics, they were opposed to any movement
which would prevent them from carrying out their policy of treating
the Ukrainians as a subject and inferior race. As a result, they put
every obstacle in the way of a reconciliation between the Autocephalous
and the Autonomous groups and threw their support to whichever was the
weaker in any given area.
The open support of the Soviet government by Sergy and his associates
now under the pressure of war paid off. His protestations of sympathy
for Stalin and the Russians were rewarded with medals and other honors.
Then, in the autumn of 1943, as the final step in the process, Stalin
gave permission for the restoration of the Patriarchate in Moscow and
Sergy was duly installed. On his death in 1944, he was succeeded by
Aleksey, the former Archbishop of Leningrad, the present Patriarch,
and under his leadership the Russian Orthodox Church has embarked upon
a policy of securing control for the Soviets of all other Orthodox
Churches.
In the meanwhile, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church during the war
displayed great activity in the occupied Ukraine. It speedily won the
support of most of the clergy who were not in the Soviet service. It
reopened churches that had been closed by the Soviets and it cooperated
with the Ukrainian patriotic movement.
With the return of the Soviet forces, the leaders of the Church
retired to the west with a large part of the priests, and the others
joined the underground. The Ukrainian Church was again suppressed and
brought directly under the Patriarch of Moscow and it is to be noted
that the head of the Orthodox Church in the UkSSR, does not hold any
special point of honor as does the Catholicus of Georgia, who is still
recognized as the head of a satellite Church.
It is thus safe to say that despite the continued existence of the
UkSSR as an independent nation for the purposes of the United Nations,
there is now no distinctive Ukrainian Orthodox Church. It has been
swallowed, as in the days of Peter I, by the great Moscow religious
imperialism. It has no independence and it is thoroughly and in all
points independent upon the Russian Patriarch in Moscow.
B. +The Catholic Church of the Byzantine Rite+
When in 1939 the Soviet forces by their understanding with the Nazis
occupied for the first time Eastern Galicia and the Western Ukrainian
lands, they at once set to work to remodel the area on their own
standards and to eliminate all the characteristic features of Ukrainian
life and culture. This process was, however, rudely interrupted by the
German attack in 1941.
The dominant religion in the area was the Greek Catholic Uniat Church,
or, to be more precise, Catholicism of the Byzantine Rite. The
Metropolitan of this Church, Andry Sheptytsky, was the most respected
figure in the entire area and he was a religious and cultural leader
in every sense of the word. During this first occupation, Archbishop
Sheptytsky was not personally disturbed but he was deprived of his
liberty and forced into a semi-retirement. His schools and other
institutions were closed, the Church was deprived of its property and
a considerable number of priests were punished on various charges. Yet
there was no general holocaust.
In 1941, Archbishop Sheptytsky was one of the leading figures in the
attempt to revive a native and independent Ukrainian government. This
was, of course, prevented by the Germans and the Archbishop remained at
Lviv scarcely more free during the German occupation of Ukraine than
he had been under the Soviets. He continued his efforts to unite both
the Ukrainian Catholic and Autocephalous Churches without effect, but
he was able to do considerable for the well-being of his people. Still
he was no longer free to act openly, although his advice was sought
whenever and wherever it could be.
The Soviets reoccupied Lviv on July 27, 1944 and at once set to work
more vigorously to introduce their system. Archbishop Sheptytsky did
not long survive for he passed away on November 1 of the same year.
He was succeeded in his post by Joseph Slipy, who had been one of
his outstanding assistants and the rector of the Theological Academy
which Metropolitan Sheptytsky had founded in the late twenties, when
it had become evident that the Poles would not allow the creation of a
Ukrainian University in Lviv.
Metropolitan Slipy had barely been installed in office, when the
Soviets showed their hand and began to call for a condemnation of the
Vatican by the Ukrainian Catholics and for their union with Moscow. It
did not take long for words to turn into actions.
On April 15, 1945, the NKVD surrounded the Cathedral of St. George in
Lviv and arrested the Metropolitan, Bishop Budko and Bishop Charnetsky
together with many other leaders. They arrested all of the students
of the Theological Academy and they likewise seized the Cathedral and
turned it over to the Patriarch of Moscow as a Russian Orthodox Church.
At the same time, they informed the professors of the Theological
Seminary that the Catholic Church of the Byzantine Rite had ceased to
exist.
At almost the same time the NKVD gathered in the other Catholic bishops
in Western Ukraine, Bishop Khomyshyn of Stanislaviv and his vicar,
Bishop Lyatyshevsky, while at the same time the Polish Communist regime
seized Bishop Kotsylovsky of Peremyshl and his auxiliary bishop,
Lakota. Bishops Khomyshyn and Kotsylovsky soon died under the treatment
that they received.
The others were kept in prison and then in 1946, according to the best
available information, Metropolitan Slipy and his associates were sent
to labor camps in the far north in the Vorkuta coal mines. From that
time they have disappeared from sight.
In 1947, the last Catholic bishop of this rite, Bishop Romzha of
Carpatho-Ukraine, while travelling through his diocese “collided”
accidentally with a Soviet tank and was killed and this ended the
Ukrainian Catholic hierarchy in their own lands. The following year
the Rumanian government followed suit and likewise annihilated the
hierarchy of the Catholic Church of the Byzantine Rite in Transylvania.
In 1950 the Czech Communist regime arrested and sentenced to life
imprisonment Bishop Hoydych and his coadjutor Hopka of the diocese of
Prashev in Slovakia.
These actions were followed in each case by attacks upon the lower
clergy, who were ordered to accept the supremacy of the Patriarch of
Moscow. This was fully in the tradition of the old Russian Church, for
each time that the tsars had bitten off a slice of Ukraine, they had
applied the same methods to the Catholic hierarchy in the section, to
the intent that the Byzantine rite could be performed only under the
supervision of the Russian authorities.
In this case in 1945, on July 1, when the Soviet Ukrainian Commissar
for Religion, Khodchenko, called on the clergy to recognize the new
situation, the professors of the Theological Academy met in Lviv in the
Cathedral of St. George and presented a request that they be given the
liberties accorded to them on paper by the Stalinist Constitution. The
answer was their arrest and imprisonment.
Then the government set to work. They secured the apostasy of one of
the foremost of the Ukrainian Catholic priests, Father Kostelnyk, who
willingly put himself at the service of the Patriarch and presided over
a “sobor” which was called to ratify the switch from the Vatican to the
Patriarch. Many of the priests who attended were apparently members of
the NKVD in disguise. They willingly applauded Stalin and the Patriarch
and armed with this authority, the Soviet regime set to work to seize
all the churches and property of the Catholic Church of the Byzantine
Rite and preempt it for their own use.
This marked the end of the open existence of the Church. There were
still priests who escaped and took refuge with the U. P. A. (the
Ukrainian underground) but open worship was at an end. There has been
enforced at least a superficial agreement with the Kremlin on all
matters of religion. Nevertheless, the latent hatred still exists and
it can flare up at any moment when the situation warrants it.
The movements represented by the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church and
the Ukrainian Catholic Church of the Byzantine Rite still flourish
in the emigration, where alone there is any opportunity for free
thought. In the meanwhile, the Kremlin is maintaining its position in
its traditional Muscovite manner and applying its savage punishments
and deportations and executions to prove that Ukraine is happy and
contented in following the example of the “elder brother.” Yet even so,
the number of episodes when Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism appears
make it seem as if the officials of both church and state were not too
sure that the Ukrainian people fully sympathize with the Patriarch
Aleksey in his deification of the foremost man of the ages, who still
forbids Communists to have anything to do with the Orthodox Church.
That has sold its soul for as little real value as did the Ukrainian
Communists in the early years of the struggle.
Conclusion
On March 5, 1953, Joseph Stalin, who had been the dominant force in the
Soviet Union for 29 years, died in the Kremlin of a stroke. The man
who had superintended the transformation of the country, the Georgian
revolutionist who had espoused the claims of the Great Russians as had
none of the Russian tsars, died peacefully in his bed, almost the only
one of the Communist leaders since Lenin who has not died violently or
in the slave camps of the north and the east. It was the end of an era.
The next day, his successor, Georgy Maximilonovich Malenkov, was
installed in office with a complete realignment of the governmental
organization and a large number of shifts, promotions and demotions
among his associates. The announcement emphasized that the new
regime would follow closely the lines promulgated by Stalin. In this
new setup, Khrushchov, the former Russian tyrant over Ukraine, was
confirmed in his position in the Presidium of the Communist Party,
and his successor, another Russian, Melnikov, the present head of the
Ukrainian Communists, was made an alternate in the same Presidium.
The day before, as Stalin lay dying, the Kremlin government issued a
statement urging unity upon all the peoples of the Soviet Union and
reiterated the statement that success in carrying on the policy was due
to the loyalty to the Soviet regime of the Great Russians, the leaders
of the Union. They were the only one of the Soviet peoples or the
peoples under the Soviets mentioned by name.
Nothing in the careers of Malenkov or of Beria, who emerges with
increased powers as the head of the Ministry of the Interior (including
National Security), or any of the men mentioned for high office gives
any indication that the old process of russification and centralization
will be changed. Everything points to an intensification of it and
perhaps an intensification that will be less original and even more
mechanical. There seems little likelihood that there will be any
diminution of pressure or any return toward the relative liberalism
of the early years. We can only wait to see whether the transmission
of power can be handled without any of the discords that followed the
death of Lenin and whether Malenkov can succeed to the deified position
which was demanded for Stalin during his later years.
The mystery that the Kremlin has thrown around itself has succeeded
in hiding from the world the personal relations of the new leaders.
Yet, the almost immediate attacks on American and British planes in
all parts of the world reflect the determination of the new regime to
continue the militant policy of its predecessor. On the other hand,
the peaceful speeches of Malenkov and a few isolated acts of apparent
diminished hostility have served to revive the hopes of many of the
Western nations in the possibilities of better relations with the USSR.
This is quite in accordance with Soviet plans to split its opponents,
who still do not want to realize that gestures of friendship to the
peoples beyond the Iron Curtain mean nothing more than gestures of
friendship to the foreign Communists already dependent upon Moscow for
their support and guidance.
By Soviet definition, the Communists are the peace-loving leaders
of all the peoples of the world and the only ones entitled to speak
for those peoples, while non-Communist governments are something to
be deceived and overthrown from within, if possible. This has been
the cardinal principle of Soviet policy since 1917 and explains the
repeated failures of the free world to reach any definite settlement
with Moscow. It should lead the West to reexamine its relations with
the Kremlin and also those with the Great Russians who are now, in the
Kremlin language, practically equated with the Communists.
It should compel the West to forget the dream of a Russian unity and
the speeches and writings of the Russian emigrés should be considered
critically in view of their attitude toward Ukraine and the other
non-Russian peoples that were conquered by the tsars, reconquered by
the Soviets and now in the name of Great Russian Communism subjected to
a new period of russification.
At the same time, there is no new evidence that the regime of Malenkov
is any more tolerant of the national differences or feelings of the
non-Russian peoples than was the previous regime. The steady rise in
influence of Khrushchov suggests the opposite and a still greater
pressure upon Ukraine.
Since World War II, the attitude of the Kremlin toward the Ukrainians
has perceptibly hardened. The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic is a
member of the United Nations. It has its own government, its own flag,
its own national anthem. Yet, by the orders of the Kremlin, no diplomat
from outside the iron curtain is admitted to its capital of Kiev. Its
government conducts all of its affairs through Moscow.
The Ukrainians are to-day the slaves of Moscow in their own country.
They are liable to be deported across its boundaries at any moment
and their places taken by Russians or persons from anywhere within
the Soviet orbit. They are compelled to think Russian thoughts,
to interpret their past, their present and their future in terms
acceptable to their elder brothers, the Great Russians. The slightest
deviation from that path is met with the grim charge of bourgeois
nationalism, the gravest offence in the entire list of crimes.
That same process in earlier stages is taking place in all the Soviet
satellites. Step by step, the culture of the other countries is being
remodelled on the Russian Soviet pattern. The Russian language is being
introduced and forced into the dominant place. Step by step, their
national traditions are being spurned, corrupted and altered, so that
they will be worthy members of the Soviet Union under Russian Communist
leadership. Their contacts with the outside world are being cut off,
while the Moscow radio blares out day and night the statements that
the Russians are the friends of peace while the nations outside are
warmongers and imperialists.
We might be tempted to believe that Moscow is right but we can
scarcely with normal intelligence and sanity believe that the millions
of Ukrainians who have been condemned for bourgeois nationalism are
anything but victims of a mania of persecution and of cruelty. We can
hardly believe in the criminality of the increasing role of victims
throughout the satellite states. We can hardly believe in the stability
of a regime which can find itself menaced by the flight of a single
citizen from its paradise.
When we add to this, the constant Soviet warnings of the danger
of espionage, their secrecy as to all matters of economics, their
isolation of foreign representatives, their unwillingness to let
travellers and observers view their great achievements, we must become
still more doubtful. We cannot give credence to the benign character
of a state which proclaims almost every day that it has discovered
new acts of disloyalty, of sabotage and of almost open revolt, which
annihilates whole groups and nations for disloyalty.
One thing is obvious. The situation calls for a firm and progressively
growing interrelation between the world outside, an interrelation in
arms and in economics and in culture. It needs an awareness of the
process by which this Soviet system has been built up. Then, perhaps in
time, we may secure the answer to the question whether the Soviet Union
will sweep the whole of humanity within its stereotyped laws because
of its real strength or whether the power of the Soviet Union is based
upon the disunion of the democratic world, its mutual jealousies and
antagonisms. Will the successors of Stalin dare to risk a war or will
their artificial structure fall apart, if it passes under too great a
strain?
Yet, to answer such a question, we must know as much as possible of
the methods by which that system is built up. It is here that the
fate of the Ukrainians comes in again, for we can follow in their sad
experiences the methods which the Russian Communists have ever employed.
In a very real sense Ukraine and the Ukrainians are the touchstone of
the system. If the Kremlin can win a lasting victory, it has a chance
of success. If it can persuade the Ukrainians to be happy in their new
slavery, it may win out. If it cannot stop their opposition except by
their total extermination, then we can be sure that the world can save
itself if it awakes.
There is only one thing certain. Before the United Nations can function
as it was intended, its members must be independent states and
peoples. That means that the Ukrainian representatives must be free
representatives of a free Ukraine who can contribute their part to the
common welfare. In one way or another, that must come and the Muscovite
domination must be ended. May it come soon and in a peaceful manner!
Then, with that, will come of necessity the ending of the process, the
restoration of liberty to the countries within the Iron Curtain and the
possibility of the cooperation of men for the elimination of suffering,
want, injustice and fear and the opening of a new and enlightened
period in human history.
Index
A
Akhmatova, Anna, 196
Aleksey, Patriarch, 210, 214
Anders, Gen., 181
Avvakum, 196
B
Bahaly, D., 75
Bandera, S., 159-168, 170, 173
Bazhan, M., 69, 124, 146
Belinsky, V., 127, 198f.
Benes, E., Pres., 177, 179
Beria, L., 142, 215
Blakytny, V., 37, 67
Bondarenko, 143
Budko, Bishop, 212
Bukharin, 68, 141
Bulakhovsky, L. A., 201